


Bruce Wayne's Birthday Party

by BlueLightningAndNexus



Series: My DC Universe [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Justice League - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Party, F/M, Origin Story, Origins of the Justice League, Secret Identity, rich people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24999544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueLightningAndNexus/pseuds/BlueLightningAndNexus
Summary: At Bruce Wayne's birthday party, several major players have arrived that will be instrumental to the Justice League. Diana Prince convinces him to approach Clark Kent about her offer to join the League.Set in 2012, a few weeks before the League forms.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West, Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Diana (Wonder Woman)/Bruce Wayne
Series: My DC Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669048
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	Bruce Wayne's Birthday Party

It was getting too late. Too late for Bruce to appear at his own birthday party without it seeming suspicious, and he knew it. 

“Master Bruce, you really should have been here 15 minutes ago,” Alfred murmured as he helped the billionaire pull off his cape. 

“You always taught me complaining never changed anything,” Bruce hissed through the pain as he slipped off his plated, onyx-colored battle armor, revealing a cluster of bruises (or was it one massive bruise? Alfred couldn’t really tell) that had turned violet, mixed with lines of cobalt blue. 

“Master Bruce, we should really do something about that nasty injury you have there.”

“No time, Alfred, everyone else is waiting for me upstairs.”

Bruce took a step forward, grabbing a deep silver-colored suit and ironed white button-down shirt, draped on top of each other over his chair positioned in front of the Bat-Computer. He barely got two buttons on before he suddenly arched forward in pain, his wound throbbing. Grabbing some painkillers and a half-empty open bottle of water from a nearby tray, Alfred brought both to Bruce, each in one hand. Bruce wordlessly grabbed the pills, popped them in his mouth, and between a series of quick, pained breaths, guzzled the glass of water as if it were the only thing keeping him alive.  
Gently holding an extended palm to one hand, balancing the weight atop his wobbly legs with the other hand, Bruce increased the volume and length of his breaths, allowing himself to breathe deeply and feel his chest expanding and shrinking against his monstrous bruise; the pain throbbing slowly and solidly against his skin and attacking his nerves. 

Watching him engage in this strange ritual, Alfred raised a single eyebrow in puzzlement and concern. “Are you sure about this, Bruce?”

Bruce took notice of the fact that his guardian dropped the ‘Master’ entirely, but didn’t dwell on it too long. “Just a second ago, you were telling me I should have been here sooner. I promise, I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.” Throwing his suit on and grabbing a nearby amethyst tie, nearly the same color as his bruise, Bruce rapidly, sloppily tied it around his neck, Alfred pulling down his collar and folding it back into its normal state. 

“You’re going to kill yourself one day, Master Bruce,” Alfred stated, worry underlying the syllables of his words, following his ward into the ancient elevator of the mansion. 

“We all die eventually, Alfred,” Bruce replied as he slapped a button on the elevator, seemingly nonchalant towards the subject of his own mortality, “I might as well die helping others.”

The elevator rose, the steel creaking as it rose up the dark stone, and eventually, the Batcave disappeared completely.  
_____________

“What kind of person doesn’t show up to their own birthday party?”

Equally pissed off, Lois Lane shrugged in agreement, annoyance and impatience plainly visible on her face. “The kind of person where a party of this magnitude doesn’t even faze them.”

Clark Kent looked up at the prism-shaped chandelier, his and Lois’ face reflecting in the glass and distorted, making his sharply-dressed, neatly-groomed form appear as some hollow mirage of a man; whereas Lois’ crimson, blood-colored dress blended with her strawberry blonde hair into a blob of color. Moving on from their distortions, Clark’s steely eyes found his way across the pearly ceiling, blending with pillars of white and limestone. 

“My god, this place seems like something out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest dreams.”

“I have no idea who that is,” he flatly responded. 

“The Great Gatsby, Clark. Didn’t you ever read that for school, Kent?”

“High school was years ago,” Clark muttered, dark hair hanging over his forehead in locks as he looked out towards the dozens of rich partygoers beneath him, “just be glad I remembered anything at all.”

“Smallville public school must have been fun,” Lois snarkily replied as she plucked a small decorative glass of rose-tinted wine of the shiny plate of a nearby waiter. 

“It was alright,” Clark muttered, keeping his eyes peeled for a familiar, obnoxious billionaire playboy. “But I wasn’t exactly the most popular kid.”

“Shocker,” Lois dryly retorted, voice dripping with sarcasm, “if I couldn’t already tell by the...everything about you.” Leaning against the ivory railing of marble molded into an elongated cylindrical rail that extended across the upper portions of the central room, Clark returned eye contact with Lois, and his blue eyes met her green irises. 

Aaaaaand speaking of irises…

Several feet below the two, Iris West was leaning against one of the massive decorative columns, a small plate of food (the ridiculously excessive stuff, like bacon-wrapped-shrimp) balanced in one hand, meticulously selecting which “rich people food” she wanted to try first, all while talking to her boyfriend on her new cell phone, balanced between her cheek and neck. 

“Barry, for the last time, I’ll be fine! I promise, nothing will happen to me, and by tomorrow night I’ll be safe back in Central.”

On the other end of the phone, Barry Allen was rushing around every square inch of his apartment, which had been practically transformed into a web of news articles, polls and police reports, connected by strings and loose trails of miscellaneous objects found around the home. In hindsight, it seemed exactly like Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes to Barry, a fantastically underrated movie and a completely unplanned result of his investigations, but one he was content with nonetheless. 

“Just be safe, alright? I keep reading of all these horrible cases going on downtown, so just make sure you never go down an alley, don’t go home too late at night, stay in well-lit areas, don’t--”

He couldn’t see on account of this being a verbal conversation over a phone and not a face-to-face interaction, but Iris was rolling her eyes. 

“Barry! I’m gonna be alright. I do all that stuff anyways. It’s gonna be alright?”

To the everyman, and with only her voice to work with, Iris West might have sounded annoyed at her long-term partner, but she was brightly smiling like a schoolgirl; Barry might sometimes be a hyperactive mess of a man, but for Pete’s sake it, he was her hyperactive mess of a man. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t mind taking a day off tomorrow and coming down with you. Just to, you know, keep you safe.”

Iris chuckled. “Barry, as tempted as I am by the thought of you and I spending the day in the city together, I saw your apartment. I know how much this case means to you.”

He’d been working on this case back at Central for weeks, ever since a new criminal came into town: Evan McCulloch. He’d somehow incapacitated ever single guard at Central’s bank, rigged all the security cameras to monitor each other, and had completely wiped out any anti-hacking defenses in the mainframe. Central’s police only knew it was him from an eyewitness that pulled his mask off.  
Barry sighed. Iris didn’t know how right she was; Barry’d not only been working on this case as the youngest and brightest forensic scientist of Central City, but as the Flash, Central City’s scarlet speedster. 

“Thanks, babe. I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Alright, Barry. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

She hung off the phone just in time to hear Bruce Wayne begin his speech. 

He hit the side of a champagne glass a couple times with a silver spoon to get the attention of the dozens, if not hundreds, of partygoers. 

“Hello, everyone,” he said, that stupid but charming billionaire smile of his plastered on his face. Bruce was, by most people’s accounts, a handsome man: his thick jet black hair, slicked up in the same style he’d worn for years, matched his dark, earthy eyes. His jawline was so chiseled he might as well have been carved by Praxiteles. 

“Sorry I was so late getting here,” he said with a chuckle, projecting his voice across the entire Great Hall and foyer. One partygoer--quite accurately--shouted “But you live here!”, eliciting a wave of laughter across the Hall. 

“Alright, alright, but do you think this,” he said, pointing to his face, “just happens?”

The women nearby chuckled even more, and Iris found herself rolling her eyes. Nonetheless, she had her notepad out and ready to scribble down anything of relevance he said. 

_____________

As Bruce was giving his short speech--consisting largely of mere pleasant formalities and thank you’s, with only a couple of comments on Wayne Enterprises’ upcoming projects and new direction--he found himself scanning the entirety of the Great Hall, looking for one familiar face. 

“And, as I said previously, thank you all for coming. Enjoy the party!”

A wave of clapping ensued, echoing throughout the expansive chambers of Wayne Manor, but Bruce still couldn’t find his guest of honor for the night.

It didn’t matter, however; she found him. 

“Hello, Bruce.”

Immediately after finishing his speech, Bruce turned around to find the source of the familiar voice: Diana Prince, dressed in a gold-and-white gown, standing directly behind him. 

Bruce allowed a small smile to creep onto his face. “Diana,” he said, enthused and energized. 

“I’ve been looking around for you,” she said. Walking closer, she looked around, making sure that no one was in earshot, before dropping her voice to a whisper. “Where the hell were you?” she hissed. 

“Old Gotham,” he told her. “Bane wasn’t going to stop himself.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “I’ll never understand why fragile men such as yourself feel the need to leap into every fight you find.”

Bruce chuckled. “Hell, you and Alfred should hang out sometime. You’re sounding a lot like him.” He paused, before registering her most recent sentence. “Wait, what do you mean by fragile?” he asked, feigning offense. 

“Fragile compared to people like me, Bruce,” she told him. “But anyways, this was a fine idea. The man of steel is here.”

Ah, Clark Kent. Billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and military intelligence officer Diana Prince--better known to the world as the dark knight Batman and the immortal hero Wonder Woman--suspected he might be the Man of Tomorrow, Superman. 

“Have you approached him?” 

“Not yet. He’s been talking with one of the other reporters from the Daily Planet, Ms. Lane.”

Once again, Bruce looked out past the balcony, an eyebrow raised. “I didn’t think he’d come.”

“No one would miss a chance to report on the birthday party of Bruce Wayne,” Diana assured him. “Not that much is happening here,” she added as an afterthought. 

“Never did understand what the big deal was,” he murmured, referring to his birthday parties. “These happen once a year.”

“People are starved for good entertainment,” Diana replied. “Plus, you’re a good actor, playing it up every year.”

Bruce observed all of the guests, mingling at the hall: drinking, eating, dancing, laughing. He couldn’t say he exactly knew most of these people, but they’d been coming to his parties to leech off his wealth for years now, and at this point, it’d raise more of a fuss in the local tabloids to not let them come. 

He looked at Diana, nodding at her as if to say ‘follow my lead,’ and the two superheroes descended down the staircase and approached the Daily Planet reporters. 

“And you’re certain this is the Superman?” Diana asked. 

“Positive,” Bruce said. “My satellites have been locked on Metropolis for months. I’ve been studying the supersonic movements of that city; anywhere else in the world, supersonic patterns would usually indicate a jet, but in Metropolis…”

“It’s all just Superman,” Diana finished. 

“Precisely. And Superman predominantly flies to two main locations: the Daily Planet’s top floor, and the apartment of mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent.”

Diana smiled. “No wonder they call you the world’s greatest detective.”  
“Who’s they?” he asked. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Diana told him. “For now, we’re just here to gather information.”

“Agreed,” he told her. Diana shot him one of her trademark princess smiles, and hooked her arm around his, leaning in close. When he gave her an odd look, she shrugged. “What?” she asked. “We need to make this look convincing.”

Bruce rolled his eyes, but kept walking. After a moment, Diana spoke. 

“I’m glad to see you’ve come around to my initial offer,” Diana told him. 

“Well, if what you say is true, we’ll need all the help we can get to ward off the upcoming invasion,” he replied. 

Diana mulled over that. “Yeah, but you never did seem like the sort to work in a team. 

Bruce thought of all the people in his life who’d brought him this far. Lucius Fox, his genius engineer and the provider of some of his best gadgets. Alfred Pennyworth, his guardian and beloved companion. Dick Grayson, his protege and adopted son, now living on his own in Bludhaven. Jim Gordon and his daughter, Barbara, who’d been invaluable to his crusade more times than he could count. Even Leslie Thompkins, who’d patched up some of his nastiest injuries when he or Alfred couldn’t, and who cared for him on countless occasions as a child. 

Now, there were even more heroes that had surfaced in the past few years that could be valuable allies: the scarlet speedster, the Atlantean king, the emerald knight, the avian fighter, the Martian Manhunter, and of course, the man of steel. 

“You’d be surprised,” Bruce replied.

**Author's Note:**

> I totally stole the idea of Bruce using supersonic jet patterns to learn Clark's identity from that TV show "The Batman." Sue me, it was a great show.


End file.
